Nokia CEO Elop: Next Billion People Need Apps, 39-Day Standby Time

By Tiernan Ray

BARCELONA

Tuesday morning in Barcelona, the second day of the Mobile World Congress show, Nokia (NOK) CEO Stephen Elop was a keynote speaker for the session “Connecting the Next Billions to the Net.” The session also featured CEOs of telecom operators Bharti Airtel and Qtel, as well as Gary Kovacs, the CEO of Mozilla, the free software organization that has made a splash this week by announcing its Firefox operating system will be used by phone makers such as ZTE.

Elop talked about visiting Thailand recently, visiting a mall. “Something caught my eye, so I took our my phone and snapped a picture.” It was a crazy picture of a mobile phone store with a blizzard of phone numbers for sale. Elop's point was that even without a birth certificate or a passport, a person can have an identity by having a phone and a number.

Nokia CEO Stephen Elop showed a picture he took of a Thai phone store offering tons of phone numbers. (Click for larger image.)

“Suddenly he or she has the same level of information once reserved for the middle classes … This has produced a level of freedom simply unprecedented in the world.” Elop points out Nokia connected “the first billion people” via voice, with devices such as a Nokia 1011, from 1991, a true brick phone of the era. Elop says the company is trying to re-invent the affordability of phones.

“One of the things that makes this opportunity so challenging is that there are many things we assume in the developed world that don't apply [in the developing world].” He highlights three things, including making connectivity affordable, allowing people with just a feature phone gain access to the “app economy,” and making content locally relevant.”

The young consumers in bustling cities are “very young and very ambitious,” says Elop. “It's like firefighting on a daily basis to make this work,” as a telecom operator, he says. People don't care about regulation or capital expenditures, they just want a great experience. So, Nokia is helping with its “Nokia Express” browser, which is a Web-based browser that compress data by up to 90%. One phone that features it is the Nokia 301, which is very battery friendly, at 39 days standby time. Making the Internet smarter is one challenge.

As far as apps, “we talk about the application wars, but the focus on quantity is less important than the quantity to these new consumers. They want the same experiences as everyone else and they want it without using a lot of data. Elop says that by “tightly coupling” apps to devices, it's expanded access to apps for people. Nokia has a group of 300 developers that have had at least a million downloads. “We're working with developers to make apps that give a great experience, even on a feature phone.”

The Nokia 105 is a €15 Euro phone, he says. It uses “Nokia Life,” a text message-based app service that is used by 100 million people around the world, including, now, in Kenya.

The third challenge is to help people in developing world discover all the things the Internet can do, such as finding local information. One of those means is “Nokia Nearby,” a free service that can make recommendations.

Interestingly, Airtel's CEO, Manoj Kohli, noted that less than a quarter of the 181 million subscribers it has in India and the 42 million it has in Africa, use data services. This is actual progress, he noted, though it is a contrast to the kinds of numbers one sees in markets such as the U.S. Kohli argued that 100% of the world must use data, “We have to all use the Internet because we are social creatures, we need to use the Internet.”

Mozilla's Kovacs made a vigorous attempt to paint the Apple (AAPL) and Google (GOOG) duopoly as being the obstacle to the future of the mobile industry, without so much as naming either company.

“Are some people sitting in a couple of buildings going to decide the content for four billion people?” he asked.

Kovacs talked up how 800 members of the press came to the organization's press conference the other day. “What was clear to me was the hunger for the open Internet.” He says the mission is to bring the Internet to mobile, “the true Internet, not the Internet as someone imagines it.” Kovacs talks about calling his 10-year-old daughter, having a chat about JavaScript, LTE, etc. she was bored and just wanted to talk about a painting she'd just finished. The lesson is that “it's all really about people” says Kovacs. He notes that the Web has over 240 million unique Web sites. “That's content we want, that's content that is locally relevant.”

“It took twenty-years for the first two billion people to connect to the Internet. If we think that's fast, the next two billion are going to connect in only five years. And the next two billion, the services they expect, are impossible for me or a couple of people in Slicon Valley to conceive of. Is a farmer in the Indian countryside going to have the same need as a lawyer in New York? I find it impossible to conceive of how five or six billion are going to get what they need from one or two companies, no matter how delicious they are.”

Kovacs notes that after to or three years of “there's an app for that …. My home screen has become a nightmare. You know what, there's a Web for that. There's a better way.” Kovacs talked about a man named Louis living in the favela. He lives in a three-room house with his family members. He is taking his online degree at night. Ad he also teaches history in the local schools when not working as a security guard. His students needed applications, “and that's where he ran into trouble, because he's an educator, not an IT expert.”

About Tech Trader Daily

Tech Trader Daily is a blog on technology investing written by Barron’s veteran Tiernan Ray. The blog provides news, analysis and original reporting on events important to investors in software, hardware, the Internet, telecommunications and related fields. Comments and tips can be sent to: techtraderdaily@barrons.com.